Mentoring is a professional development relationship where an experienced individual provides guidance, support, and feedback to someone who is seeking to improve their knowledge, skills, or career prospects. The mentor can act as an advisor and role model, who helps the mentee to set and achieve professional goals, overcome challenges, and develop new competencies.

Mentoring is a valuable tool for professional development, as it allows individuals to receive personalized guidance and support from experienced professionals who can share their knowledge, insights, and experiences. Therefore, mentoring relationships are usually established between members of the same or similar industry, such as the BC and resilience industry. The BCI has supported mentoring in this sector through its own mentoring programme, which is an additional benefit for members.

Reverse mentoring is a professional development relationship where an experienced person receives guidance and feedback from a less experienced individual. BCI plans to offer reverse mentoring to benefit its members, which can cover various topics. The program will help individuals learn from each other regardless of experience, improve leadership and communication skills, bridge generational gaps, enhance diversity and inclusion efforts, and advance careers.

The BCI Mentoring program is an exclusive benefit to members and consists of two programs: standard and reverse mentoring. The standard mentoring program is available to all BCI members except Corporate Affiliate members - It follows the traditional mentoring approach. The reverse mentoring program is accessible to all BCI members, including Corporate Affiliate members - It covers diverse topics such as technology, social media, workplace culture, diversity, and inclusion. Additionally, the reverse mentoring program can be customized to specific areas of expertise or professional interests, like marketing, finance, or sales skills and knowledge.

Mentoring has been proven, in studies and research from Gallup, Deloitte and several others, to help with employee engagement, employee retention and overall employee upskilling. By supporting and encouraging your employees to participate in BCI Mentoring, you will actively encourage both mentors and mentees to think about their career, their objectives and how they can achieve goals and aims within their role and their wider career journey. What is more, mentoring can help companies and organisations to drastically reduce coaching and training costs, by allowing professionals to gain knowledge and experience externally through their membership body.

Yes, BCI Mentoring is open to students; however, it is not intended for coursework. It is designed to provide students with mentoring and guidance related to their professional development and career aspirations.

Typically, you don’t have to be in an active mentoring relationship to use PushFar. Members could join the platform to find mentors or mentees, connect with other professionals, have one-time meetings, access resources, and participate in discussions and events related to career development

Nowadays, there are several different types of mentoring. Traditional (standard) mentoring was the act of a senior and experienced individual in an industry acting as a support and adviser to someone less experienced. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of mentoring is just this - “An experienced person in a company or educational institution who trains and counsels new employees or students.” And while this is largely still the case, there are other mentoring techniques and types popping up, such as reverse mentoring. Reverse mentoring is, as it suggests, where new, junior, and less-experienced individuals’ mentor those who have been in the industry for considerably longer. The idea behind this is that those with a fresh, new perspective can help to push change. 

To become one of our BCI mentors on the standard mentoring program:

• you should be either a current MBCI or FBCI (Hons included) of the BCI.
• have time to dedicate to supporting a fellow professional in the industry.
• your membership will have to stay current throughout the duration of the mentoring partnership.
• you should have broad experience and knowledge of BC and Resilience, with significant work experience in the industry.
• you must practice active listening.
• Mentors should possess a good understanding of the BCI competency framework to provide guidance for mentees in business continuity and resilience.
• you should have excellent communication and personal development skills and a sound understanding of competencies and professional development in a Business Continuity and Resilience context.

To become one of our BCI mentors on the Reverse mentoring program:

• you should be a current member of the BCI.
• have time to dedicate to supporting a fellow professional in the industry.
• your membership will have to stay current throughout the duration of the mentoring partnership.
• you should have broad experience and or knowledge of the subject area.
• you must practice active listening.
• you should have excellent communication and personal development skills and a sound understanding of professional development.
   

Becoming a mentor can be a highly rewarding experience for a variety of reasons:

• Learn from Experts: Access support, guidance, and networking with industry leaders.
• Career Boost: Advance your career with mentorship that's proven to make a difference.
• Strategic Planning: Get independent career advice to chart your path.
• Skill Enhancement: Develop vital skills with personalized guidance.
• Knowledge Transfer: Gain insights from experienced mentors.
• Confidence Building: Grow with mentor support and make confident decisions.
• Networking Edge: Expand your network for new opportunities.
• Inspiration: Be motivated to excel in your field.

BCI mentoring programs offer personalized guidance, skill development, career advancement, and diverse perspectives.

• Personalized Guidance: Receive tailored guidance and support from experienced mentors to achieve your professional goals.
• Skill Development: Cultivate new skills and enhance your expertise within your field.
• Career Advancement: Access significant learning opportunities and acquire essential competencies for success.
• Network Building: Establish valuable professional contacts through mentoring.
• Confidence and Motivation: Gain confidence and motivation with constructive feedback and support on your journey to success.

Benefits of Reverse Mentoring for Members:

• Learning Opportunity: Gain fresh perspectives and insights in your field.
• Leadership Development: Enhance leadership and communication skills.
• Bridging Generational Gaps: Promote a culture of continuous learning and inclusivity.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Encourage diverse perspectives and insights.
• Career Advancement: Benefit from ongoing learning and stay current in your field.

Benefits of Mentoring to Organizations:

• Improved Retention and Engagement: Boost employee satisfaction and productivity.
• Talent Development: Nurture high-potential employees and enhance talent retention.
• Diversity and Inclusivity: Foster a more inclusive workplace culture through better understanding.
• Improved Leadership: Develop leaders with a better understanding of employee needs.
• Enhanced Learning and Development: Offer employees access to valuable expertise.
• Enhanced Innovation and Creativity: Encourage the value of collaboration and idea-sharing.

We would recommend aiming, initially, for a 6-12 month mentoring relationship, as a general guide. However, if you are looking for a mentor to assist you with a specific challenge or aspect of your career development, it is likely that within this there will be a clear timeframe, defined by results (such as overcoming the challenge in question).

Members can take advantage of the search and matching capabilities, which are tailored to your goals, experience, and interests. For the most accurate matches, we suggest filling out your mentoring profile fully with the most current and relevant information and keeping it up-to-date consistently.

When engaging in a mentoring relationship, it is advisable to communicate with your mentor/mentee at least once or twice a month. Ideally, these regular meetings should last for a minimum of 30 minutes to an hour – it may be longer depending on what you have agreed. While some mentoring relationships may require longer catch-ups every quarter, most relationships benefit from monthly check-ins. During these meetings, it is essential to discuss the mentee's progress in the previous month, identify any sticking points or challenges, and assess how well goals are being met. To ensure clear expectations, you can utilize the Mentee Development Plan template, which is available on the mentoring platform's resources page and use the Goals feature to track progress. 

Travel is not required to take full advantage of the program! This program is intended to be completed either virtually or in person, depending on what is agreed. We highly encourage mentoring relationships to make use of the in platform video conferencing feature and any other video conferencing platform and by phone/email. 

Yes. A mentor and a manager both have very important and separate roles. Both a manager and a mentor are there to offer support. However, a manager’s primary focus is typically on achieving organisational goals. Therefore, they must ensure their advice is aligned with the organisation’s vision. Furthermore, a manager typically sets targets and goals for an individual. However, a mentor is focused on the individual’s career progression, their own goals, and their objectives. Ultimately, both are there to help an individual to flourish.

Coaching and mentoring can both support career development and help individuals improve their skills and achieve their goals. However, there are some key differences between the two:

• Structure: Mentoring is often flexible and adaptable, focusing on the mentee’s own aims and objectives, whereas coaching tends to be structured with goals, plans, and strategies for a specific purpose. Since it tends to focus on specific goals or challenges, coaching is more task-oriented and is often focused on helping the individual improve their performance in a particular area. Mentoring is more relationship-oriented and involves providing guidance, support, and advice over a longer period of time. Indeed, coaching may involve a series of sessions over several weeks or months but mentoring can continue for months or even years. 
• Expertise: Coaches are often experts in a specific area and use this knowledge to help their clients achieve specific goals. However, mentors may not be experts in a particular field, but can provide guidance and support based on their own experiences and insights. For example, mentors on the BCI programme are all skilled BC and resilience professionals with a certified membership.
• Focus on self vs focus on others: Coaching focuses on helping individuals improve their own skills and performance. Mentoring, on the other hand, involves helping others develop their skills and achieve their goals, often with positive outcomes for both sides of the mentoring relationship. Some of these outcomes will be explored in the following section.

Constructive feedback should be specific, balanced, and aimed at improvement. You can learn how to give feedback effectively through resources provided on the platform.

We are delivering our mentoring programme through PushFar. PushFar is a career progression and professional mentoring software platform designed to help individuals with mentoring. It has a wealth of tools to help members find a suitable mentoring match, manage their mentoring relationships, schedule goals, track their progress and ultimately navigate through mentoring most effectively.

BCI members can access this platform and sign up for any of our applicable programs. When you sign up, you will have the option to register as either a mentor, a mentee or both. Do not worry - after you have registered you can update your mentoring preferences at any stage. As well as mentoring, you can connect with like-minded professionals through the platform.

BCI's goal is to aid members in professional development, regardless of location. However, our current mentoring program is limited and manual. To expand our global reach, we've improved the program with a platform for knowledge and experience sharing. It'll benefit younger and less experienced members and address challenges of marginalized groups through reverse mentoring. Aligned with the BCI competency framework, the renewed program includes matching services and resources for enhanced experience.

Delivering mentoring through PushFar allows us to be innovative and continuously evolving, providing a user-friendly experience for remote working. Our new digital system ensures confidentiality and enables safe connections among members globally. We focus on competency-based development and encourage knowledge exchange across all membership grades. Our online community facilitates discussions on global issues, cultures, and industries in the sector.

Benefits of delivering the BCI mentoring program through PushFar

• Utliizes an intelligent algorithm to match mentors and mentees based on predefined focus areas, availability, capacity, location, and member profiles. 
• The platform provides insightful analytics for continuous program improvement.
• Multiple tailored programs can be created. 
• Direct communication and goal tracker tools make mentoring relationships tangible.
• Access to forums and threads allowing for community engagement.

All members will be required to register for the first time, to gain access into the platform.

• All members will need to log into their membership BCI website in order to register/log into the new mentoring platform. 
• There is a unique log in link that will take you to the specially created PushFar log in on our website.
• This link is accessible on the mentoring pages. 
• Requests for mentees are automatically approved, while requests to become a mentor are reviewed and approved accordingly.

The registration consists of just two steps

Step 1 asks for some essential details to create a profile. These include

• First name and Last name
• Email 
• Job title
• Location – Town or City
• A profile bio (1-2 sentences that summarise the member’s professional self. This could include an introduction to your work, experience and day-to-day role)
• Job function
• Languages you are able to communicate in – multiple selection
• Whether the member would like to be a mentor, mentee or both. A member can choose to be a mentor or mentee or both, if eligible.

Note: To make the registration process smoother, some information will be pre-populated. However, updating your details on this platform won't automatically update your BCI membership information. To ensure that your details are updated, please make the changes through your BCI website profile, and it will be automatically updated on the mentoring platform. Mentors can have up to 10 mentees through the system. This is to allow for one-time mentoring meetings. Mentees can have as many mentors as they wish if they dedicate the time needed to manage the mentoring relationships.

Step 2 of registration asks about the mentoring preferences. These include:

• As a Mentor:
  • Experience and how you can support mentees
  • Whether you would prefer to mentor in person or virtually
  • How many mentee's you're willing to have?
  • Specific areas in which you can offer support
• As a Mentee:
  • What you are looking for from a mentor
  • Specific areas in which you are seeking support

After both stages of registration are completed, the member will have access to the platform and can start using their profile. If a member selects to be both a mentor and a mentee, two tabs will be available to allow them toggle between both, to see recommended match lists.

The previous programme was designed for the website and does not function like the new platform. Additionally, we have found a vast number of old mentoring relationships that have already ended but have yet to be marked as such, leading to inaccurate information. To ensure consistency and allow members to get the most out of their mentoring relations, we have asked all existing mentors and mentees to register anew in the new BCI Mentoring. If you have an existing mentoring relationship, we encourage you to search for and enter a new mentoring relationship with your partner on the new platform. You can transfer any documentation or conversation across, by uploading them to the goals feature on the platform. 
 

The platform is designed to streamline the mentoring process and allow us to manage members' mentoring relationships and career progression effectively. The main aspects and elements of the platform to note include the navigation bar (located on the top of the screen on desktop and at the bottom of the screen on mobile) and the side menu on mobile.

Home - This is where you can view your mentoring relationships, see any upcoming mentoring meetings and view updates about your career progression process.

Your Profile - This is where you can see details that others will see about you, such as your current and previous roles.

Inbox - This is where you can view messaging threads between other members on the platform, whether that be your mentor or mentee, or other individuals you are networking with.

Your Reports - The reports page provide you with insights into how proactive you are being in your career progression and mentoring activities.

Notifications - Your notifications page is where you can view updates relating to mentoring requests, mentoring meetings and updates to conversations.

Resources - you can access guidelines and mentoring resources here.

Settings - The settings page is where you can update your preferences around privacy, notifications and account controls.

Logout - To log out of your account, click the logout icon.

Once a member completes the registration process and enters their mentoring preferences, the platform will suggest a list of up to five of the most suitable mentoring matches for the member. If the member has selected to be both a mentor and mentee, they will have two tabs that they can toggle between.

Within this suggested list of matches, the member can review what they are either looking for from a mentor, or what they can offer as a mentor. They can also see each individual's job title, location and profile picture (if they have added one). On the right-hand side of each suggested match sits three options:

• View: This takes the member to the individual's profile, to find out more about them, such as previous roles and experience.
• Request: This will take the member to a final request page where they can then input details about their request - such as the length of relationship and frequency of mentoring meetings.
• Dismiss: This removes the suggested mentor match from their recommended list. The members dismissed will not be notified.
   

By default, BCI Mentoring through PushFar's platform uses an algorithm based on vital information when suggesting matches. Information includes a combination of matching categories, preferred mentoring type/location, mentoring capacity and other custom rules. You can dismiss any proposed matches that you don't feel are relevant to what you are looking for, and the system will take this into account. Alternatively, you can manage your own matching by searching through the platform and sending your own request to a mentor/mentee.

Access the platform at any time via the BCI mentoring page and utilize the service. 

PushFar offers resources like how-to guides, templates, recordings, training sessions, webinars, articles, and networking events. You can explore the platform to see what additional tools and features are provided.

If you're busy and need to take a break from your mentoring experience, it's easy to pause it. Just head over to your mentoring preferences on PushFar, scroll down, and click on "Pause Mentoring" to temporarily pause it. Remember, pausing your mentoring is all about taking control of your availability. And when you're ready to continue your enriching mentoring journey, don't forget to unpause it.

Consider arranging a one-time meeting to discuss mentoring before committing to a relationship. Multiple meetings can be arranged if needed.
 

We have noticed that sometimes people are unable to connect with PushFar's video calling feature due to a company firewall blocking the platform. Much like how some companies restrict the use of video calling platforms like Zoom to internal use only, PushFar can also be blocked by a firewall. PusFar uses WebRTC, an open-source real-time video calling technology that is widely used by most webinar platforms. WebRTC transmits audio and video between mobile apps and web browsers. If it is disabled through your web browser, the browser will not be able to transmit the audio and video from you, which means the webinar or video conference won't work. Usually, WebRTC is enabled by default, but there may be instances where admin or web browser extensions have prohibited or blocked the technology from working.

To enable a successful connection and video calling to work, a network or IT team would need to ensure that PushFar.com isn't blocked as a URL and that the Google STUN network is available. For external connections, we use stun.l.google.com port 19302. 

There are some common issues that could potentially be blocking the video calling feature, which can easily be resolved. 

• If you're using Chrome, it is the recommended web browser for PushFar video calling. You should check if there are any plugins installed in Chrome that are blocking WebRTC. Some examples could be WebRTC Leak Prevent, WebRTC Control, Easy WebRTC Block, WebRTC Network Limiter, and more. To do so, in the menu, select More Tools and then proceed to the Extensions tab. Find the plugins mentioned above and deactivate them for the period of the webinar or uninstall them completely in case you no longer need them.
• You should also check that PushFar video calling has permission to access your webcam and microphone in your PC settings. If not, you can easily grant access. We recommend clearing your browser cache and cookies, which can also be causing interference. You can find instructions on how to do this here https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/32050?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop.

In case you and your mentoring partner are unable to use PushFar's video calling platform, you can use an alternate platform such as Teams or Zoom for scheduling meetings. You can then select the meeting type as external and keep a log of all the meeting notes and host the actual meetings on the external platform.

We hope these steps help you resolve any issues you may be facing and enable you to connect with your mentoring partner seamlessly.

When you send a message directly, the recipient receives a notification of a new message via email.

All information submitted through BCI mentoring on the PushFar platform is confidential. No information will be shared publicly without your explicit permission unless required by law.

For any inquiries about the program, please feel free to contact our team at [email protected]. Additionally, for platform assistance, please reach out to [email protected].

Yes, you can make changes through the 'Settings' section of your profile. You can change email notifications, profile visibility and also block users if necessary.

• By participating in the BCI standard mentoring program, all mentees and mentors agree to the following terms and conditions:
• Participation in BCI's standard mentoring program is voluntary; you can withdraw anytime.
• Success depends on effort; no guaranteed specific outcomes.
• Maintain confidentiality and respect privacy during mentoring.
• Professional boundaries and ethics must be upheld in interactions.
• Mentees are accountable for their choices and outcomes.
• Matching aims for compatibility but adjustments may be needed.
• Mentors offer guidance but not a substitute for expert advice.
• Respectful and professional conduct is expected; no discrimination.
• Feedback is welcomed for program improvement and adherence to the BCI Code of Professional Conduct. 

When taking part in the mentoring program, both mentors and mentees acknowledge that they have carefully read, comprehended, and accepted the terms and conditions specified. The BCI reserves the right to remove any Mentor or Mentee who does not exhibit the characteristics outlined in this guidance. Read the BCI Privacy Policy, as it provides important advice and guidance about your personal data. 

The BCI mentoring program offers a completely automated service, but we understand that sometimes things may not go as planned. In such cases, mentors and mentees are encouraged to contact [email protected] for assistance. For more information about our complaints process, kindly check out the complaints section on our website. https://www.thebci.org/about-bci/governance.html.